Clinical evaluation of patients in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) often relies heavily on diagnostic images, such as portable chest radiographic images, for example. It has been noted that chest radiographs can be particularly helpful in the ICU for indicating significant or unexpected conditions requiring changes in patient management. To meet the need for readily accessible and rapid diagnostic imaging, equipment such as portable chest radiography equipment has been developed, allowing the ICU clinicians to conveniently obtain a radiographic image as needed for the patient.
There can be considerable difficulty in detecting the proper position for various devices in the patient relative to patient anatomy, such as endo-tracheal (ET) tubes, feeding tubes (FT), and nasogastric (NT) tubes. Similar problems are faced whenever softer anatomy structures must be detected and differentiated from surrounding bone structure and foreign objects, such as clamps. Surrounding bone structures, termed background structures relative to the problem of tube and tip detection, effectively act as noise in many image evaluations, making it difficult to perceive softer structures and organs.
Even though the radiologist or technician has various tools for adjusting the displayed view of a digital radiographic image and heightening the contrast for features of interest, there can still be considerable difficulty in discerning softer tissues or soft tubing due to the high noise levels from background structures including skeletal structures and from foreign objects. Methods are needed for suppressing background structure noise and suppressing foreign objects and image artifacts in order to allow the structures and tissue of interest to be more readily visible in a displayed radiographic image.